Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers

Just as a basket's purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket.

Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.

Author: Elissa Washuta
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 06/28/2019
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780295745756

About the Author

Elissa Washuta (Cowlitz) is assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University. Theresa Warburton is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in American studies and English at Brown University and assistant professor of English at Western Washington University.